I noticed it but I didn't want to bring it up in case you're one of those people who gets annoyed when your errors are pointed out. (I'm used to proud grammar twats on facebook.) I guess you aren't one of those types? Hey Svip, you put 'you' instead of 'who' silly! :P

It's neither. It's merely a pun. The original sentence was a comment relating to typography, but the response was nothing that could exist exclusively with reference to typography. In fact the response could be made to several statements. Examples:

I do not find death particularly funny.

I'm not amused by cemeteries.

Sometimes jokes turn serious, and I'm not into that.

A dire situation is no time for levity.

This list is not intended to be exhaustive. I'm not interested in any I may have forgotten. Anyhow, my point was that the quip regarding a "grave sense of humour" was not particularly a typography joke, just a pun using what Svip had said immediately before. It required no specific level of nerdiness, interest in typography, or knowledge of the subject to make or to "get".

Late had VERY little humour and is just depressing the way it jumps through dystopic futures (the song doesn't help)

You've got to be kidding. Both the dystopian futures and the song were very funny stuff. There were tons of jokes in there, plenty of references to classic and modern sci-fi (literary and filmed), and some fucking brilliant art and animation helped out to make those scenes some of the best in Futurama. If you can't appreciate any of that then I don't know why you're a fan of the show (or why you signed up to the premier Futurama appreciation board on the internet for that matter).

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and there wasnt' enough time to properly appreciate their plight

It's a 20-minute cartoon. Dude. How much time do you want them to spend on "appreciating their plight" ? The majority of the episode is spent with the timeship crew haplessly lurching forward through... um, not history. The other thing. Stuff that's going to happen. The future. Time. That stuff. The message was gotten across pretty well. As well as it could be within the constraints of the format.

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plus the emotional plot seemed like a poor forced attempt at replicating other better Fry and Leela stories.

Replication of sitations is what sitcoms thrive on. I don't think you should be watching TV shows like Futurama. Perhaps you'd prefer that godawful programme about the Kardashians. Or the Jersey Shore. Or Big Brother. You know, something shit that's produced specifically to appeal to stupid people. Seems like it might be more your sort of thing.

Comedy. Jokes. What part of them don't you get? First of all, the "name stealing brother" (not "brother stealing name") isn't exactly random. It's something that actually makes sense within the confines of the story. It's not contrived, it fits. Until we get to the big reveal. Then everything else fits. Duh.

The seven-leaf-clover is a joke, and a macguffin. It's not something that you can really pick nits with. It does a fine job of being both.

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And on a lesser note, but still leaving a bad taste in my mouth, I didn`t appreciate the legitimate art form of bboying being mocked as a dorky eighties fad. Yes, I know that as a comedy Futurama makes fun of eveything, but breakers struggle to break that stereotype and a little accuracy would be appreciated.

I take it you're referring to the beatboxing from Noticeably F.A.T. in the flashback where Fry performs a septuple headspin?

Get this: it is dorky, it's not a legitimate artform, and that you'd like somebody to take it seriously just makes me feel sorry for you. Even as I'm laughing at you for being a truly pathetic specimen of humanity.

To be honest, I think the LPJF could have benefitted from being longer. We could have done with seeing a few more eras, or maybe a bit longer in some of the ones we saw (I especially would have liked to see a bit more of the Dumblocks/Eloi era) but less is more sometimes. I have to admit, the episode is rather depressing in some ways (considering that the wacky future we love so much is going to vanish at some point in the future, and there will be no trace of NNY ever.) But still it's a great episode, and I absolutely love it.

I have to admit, the episode is rather depressing in some ways (considering that the wacky future we love so much is going to vanish at some point in the future, and there will be no trace of NNY ever.)

Nothing lasts forever, Spacefish.

The moon is slowly drifting away from the Earth. In a few thousand years, it'll be a lot smaller. In a few more thousand years, it'll escape us entirely, and either wander into space or fall into the sun.

The sun itself is going to burn up all of its fuel at some point. Millions of years from now, it will expand and swallow the inner planets. Mars will become a tropical world, briefly. Then it'll collapse again, and basically become a cinder. The solar system will become an assortment of bodies on their own courses to nowhere, and disperse. The sun's remains will drift through the void as well. Some lumps of accumulated metals, some clouds of gases, but nothing larger than an asteroid. It'll all wander around the universe, until it happens across a strong enough gravitational field to pull it in.

This will happen to every single solar system. One by one, the stars in the universe will burn out, and become so much celestial diftwood. These bits and pieces will either end up feeding black holes or end up wandering forever until the particles that make them up begin to decay (more on this in a moment).

Even black holes will evaporate over time. They need to be fed with material. Once it's all gone, they'll still be throwing out all sorts of exotic radiation. That's gotta come from somewhere. It uses up mass. The black hole shrinks. Until it's either not a black hole anymore, or it's gone.

Eventually, the universe will reach a state where all energy has become dissipated and diffuse to the point where no particle has any relation to another, and everything is as close to a temperature of absolute zero as possible whilst matter still actually exists.

Finally, matter will cease to exist. On a long enough timeline (Bajillions and Umptillions of Squillions of years), all elementary particles are subject to decay. We think that protons might be stable indefinitely, but it's doubtful that we'll ever be able to prove it. Even if they are, they'll be unrelated to any other particle, and everything will at some point stop moving, as well. The universe will suffer what's known as "heat death".

Before that happens though, the internal clock of the universe might run out. There has been speculation that time as we know it is not infinite, and there might only be a certain period for which it will run.

Yeah, experimental physicists like to think about weird things. I don't hang around with any of those guys.

The only thing that's certain is that nothing is forever, and change is the driving force behind all of existence. All that we can be sure of is entropy. Which is odd, considering how long it actually took us to define and quantify entropy. You'd think that something that fundamental would have been one of the first things that mankind would search to understand. Instead, we spent a few thousand years dodging the questions that would have led us there.

Apparantly it was important to invent war and pyramids and cheese first.

I don`t expect people to agree with my unpopular opinions, and I revealed them anticipating the backlash. But totalnerduk, you are a new parasitic strain of bacteria who thrives off of convincing yourself and the Internet that you`re smarter than everyone else and the penulnimate authority on the definition of artistry, even while you live in squalid and lonely obscurity. Your belief that anyone who doesn`t completely agree with you is ignorant and hasn`t thought about their decision is demonstrative of your failure to complete kindergarten ethics lessons.

That isn`t my rebuttal, just stating facts while remaining the only rational one between the two of us.

Here we go, paragraph-by-paragraph:Humour is a definite fact now? I wasn`t aware you were the Supreme Overlord of Laughter now. I lightly laughed maybe twice throught the course of the whole episode. I didn`t find the episode that funny. Get the fck over that. And as for why I joined the forum? Well, I joined because I LOVE FUTURAMA. I love Futurama because most of the other episodes I enjoyed considerably more than this one. Whod`ve thought?

Wow, really? It`s 22 minutes long? I`m well aware of the limitations of the format; I wasn`t blaming the writers for its length. I still got vibes of "oh, they`re trapped in the future. Whatever, ho-hum, let`s move on". I don`t know that throwing more time at the story would have necessarily helped, but I just know somehting with the pacing seemed off.

Your next argument is one sentence that helps you in no way (repetition of plots is what sitcoms thrive on? Have they changed the meaning of the word thrive?) followed by four sentences of tired straw men about reality shows. I have never watched more than five seconds of any of those shows and as I`ve stated before, I LOVE FUTURAMA. Despite its fans. Really the whole paragraph ignored my main point, which was that the romantic story was sub-par at best in comparison to the Fryla plots of eps like Parasites Lost, Devil`s Hands, Wild Green. Rebirth etc.

I guess the part of jokes I don`t get are the parts were pulled out of thin air. (Btw, "brother" is the subject, "stealing" the verb, and "name" the object.) Obviously the themes behind it fit with the episode`s message; it was the action itself (why his name? why would Fry think that? Why is Yancy`s problem stealing?), plus the logistics problems (why did no one ever say "hey, the first Martian had the same name as you"? why couldn`t Fry recognize that it was not his own brother?) that was contrived. "Seven-leaf clover" is not a joke. At least not the kind you`re supposed to find humourous.

As for your comments about b-boying, it`d be a waste of time to argue with someone who clearly has no idea what they`re talking about; their only source of knowledge on the subject having come from that very scene in the episode. So I`ll just leave you with instructions to Youtube Bboy`s Kujo, Cloud, and/or Ken Swift (esp Cloud), which I know you won`t do since you have a very busy schedule of posting FIRST! on the comment section of articles and writing death threats to George Lucas.

I don`t expect people to agree with my unpopular opinions, and I revealed them anticipating the backlash. But totalnerduk, you are a new parasitic strain of bacteria who thrives off of convincing yourself and the Internet that you`re smarter than everyone else and the penulnimate authority on the definition of artistry, even while you live in squalid and lonely obscurity.

Firstly, if you anticipated "the backlash", why do you feel the need to try and respond with such scornful (and frankly, stale) derision? If you'd truly anticipated that people would both disagree with you and find your position difficult to actually believe, then why bother being so overtly antagonistic?

Secondly, I am well aware that there are many people who are far smarter than I. You, I am not convinced are one of them. I know I'm no authority on the definition of artistry, but I do know what's great about Futurama, and what makes for a truly stunning episode. TLPJF had it in spades. I'm hardly alone in that opinion either. I may be arrogant, but I'm not unrealistic.

Thirdly, I do not live in squalor. I live somewhere in between squalor and opulent splendour. I do, however, live in obscurity. I am thankful for this. I shall remain behind the scenes and unobserved, if given any choice in the matter. Even when my glorious and impregnable castle is erected on the lunar surface, few people will know who actually lives there, and holds their lives in the palm of his black-gloved giant-orbital-laser-caressing hand.

Fourthly, I believe you've used the wrong word there. "Penultimate" refers to something that's one step removed from final. The penultimate authority would be one step below the ultimate authority. Have you pegged me as somebody who would defer to the opinions of none save for one other, or did you simply fuck up there?

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Your belief that anyone who doesn`t completely agree with you is ignorant and hasn`t thought about their decision is demonstrative of your failure to complete kindergarten ethics lessons.

Please tell me exactly where I stated this belief. Link to it, or else post a retraction of that statement. Whilst I realise that people will occasionally disagree with me, I'm entirely aware that this is not always due to being ignorant or unthinking. Sometimes it's due to a valid point of view. Sometimes another person will even manage to convince me of the validity of their own point of view over mine, and the disagreement will be resolved. Sometimes, though, a person's point of view will just be completely and totally indefensible. Like yours.

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That isn`t my rebuttal, just stating facts while remaining the only rational one between the two of us.

I think what you mean there is that you thought you'd take the opportunity to throw around a few words and to try to antagonise me. I hope you enjoyed it, kid. You've actually not stated a single fact there. Well done. It takes a certain type of dedication to be that comprehensively devoted to failure.

Have a cookie. Have a glass of warm milk. Don't take it badly, but you're not very good at this. I'll go through the parts of your post where you actually tried to say something now, shall I?

Humour is a definite fact now? I wasn`t aware you were the Supreme Overlord of Laughter now.

You will be aware of this from now on, I trust. But seriously, I never claimed to be the Supreme Overlord of Laughter. That sounds like some sort of demonic clown. What I said was that there were tons of jokes, and that the episode was very funny. Those can be independantly verified.

Go check the infosphere and the review thread here if you don't believe me. There's a high joke-density throughout, and most of them are mentioned either in the review thread or the article. There are in fact, more than I care to enumerate, because it would take far too long. This post would end up the length of a diplodocus' tail (they're long).

Perhaps you didn't get many of the jokes. That is not a failing on the part of the episode.

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I lightly laughed maybe twice throught the course of the whole episode. I didn`t find the episode that funny. Get the fck over that.

Well, I'm not going to lose sleep over you not laughing. I find the idea that you hate the episode to be completely fucking absurd though. It's funny, it's touching, it's epic in scope, and it's a masterpiece.

And as for why I joined the forum? Well, I joined because I LOVE FUTURAMA. I love Futurama because most of the other episodes I enjoyed considerably more than this one. Whod`ve thought?

That's the part I don't get. I don't see how you can love Futurama and hate TLPJF. It's everything that Futurama has always set out to be. Episodes such as TLPJF, TKOS, RTEW, MTS, AFTR, and TFP are very much the jewels in Futurama's crown, for the simple reason that they tell a great story with both humour and heart. The episodes such as TPOB, Reincarnation, AOI, and AWITM that are mainly played for laughs and wacky hijinks are fine, but they're just not quite on the same level as the episodes that have it all.

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Wow, really? It`s 22 minutes long? I`m well aware of the limitations of the format; I wasn`t blaming the writers for its length.

Yet you complain. You specifically complain that there wasn't enough time for us to "appreciate [the] plight" of the heroes. They've (seemingly) got no way back to their "home" timeframe and we're treated to a series of scenes that adequately establish this. What did you want? More scenes of Fry wandering the wasteland at the end of the world and moping like some emo kid? Go watch I am Legend if you want to watch something about a guy wandering around the end of the world and "appreciating [his] plight".

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I don`t know that throwing more time at the story would have necessarily helped, but I just know somehting with the pacing seemed off.

As I've mentioned, it's less than half an hour long. Anything that's as epic in scale as traversing the lifetime of the universe is going to feel a little rushed.

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Your next argument is one sentence that helps you in no way (repetition of plots is what sitcoms thrive on? Have they changed the meaning of the word thrive?) followed by four sentences of tired straw men about reality shows.

Pick a sitcom. Pick any. Let's use Friends as an example. Oh, no. Wait. Let's use Frasier. No, wait. Let's use Cheers. Or how about Seinfeld. No, let's use all of them. Pick any four episodes of any one of those shows at random, and one or more will conform to this outline:

There will be, I predict, some sort of misunderstanding. Somebody will be to blame, and the situation will anger another party. It might not be the fault of the person who is to blame, but the other party will still be angry at them. Adventures will occur over the length of the episode. One party will come to a realisation, and the other party will end up doing something that either fixes the original situation or eradicates the results. At the end of the episode, the situation reverts to the default dynamic. Comedy and wacky hijinks will have ensued along the way.

Sitcoms thrive on the replication of this formula, because it is proven to provide the impetus for an entire plot to move along and conclude within the space of half an hour and allow the audience to laugh along the way. Assuming that the jokes aren't going over their heads, that is.

If the shippy elements of TLPJF felt like a replication of earlier Fry/Leela shippy plots, that's because most of those will also conform to the outline above. A less generic, more specifically Futurama outline of a Fry/Leela plot would be:

Fry is thoughtless. Leela is either not attracted to Fry, or angry at him. Fry has no way to stop Leela from being angry with him initially, but after/during some sort of crisis or minor inconvenience, ends up doing or saying something that makes Leela realise he was either thoughtless by accident, or the initial set of circumstances were not his fault. One or both of them may have been presumed dead by the other at some point. Leela then either regrets her anger, or forgives Fry. Fry and Leela are re-united as friends by the end of the episode.

The meaning of the word "thrive" remains unchanged. Why don't you look it up? It should give you something to do.

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I have never watched more than five seconds of any of those shows and as I`ve stated before, I LOVE FUTURAMA.

You especially love the parts that aren't very good, and dislike the better ones, it would appear.

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Despite its fans. Really the whole paragraph ignored my main point, which was that the romantic story was sub-par at best in comparison to the Fryla plots of eps like Parasites Lost, Devil`s Hands, Wild Green. Rebirth etc.

Late had VERY little humour and is just depressing the way it jumps through dystopic futures (the song doesn't help) and there wasnt' enough time to properly appreciate their plight,plus the emotional plot seemed like a poor forced attempt at replicating other better Fry and Leela stories.LotF was very fabricated/manatee`d- I mean, "7 leaf clover?" "brother stealing name?" So random.

That doesn't seem like a "main point" to me. Especially since you then used so many more words on the subject of beatboxing.

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I guess the part of jokes I don`t get are the parts were pulled out of thin air.

Congratulations. You've managed to make no sense at all there. Well done. Have another cookie.

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(Btw, "brother" is the subject, "stealing" the verb, and "name" the object.)

Oh, I see, you were using as few words as possible and hoping that people would divine the intent behind their apparantly random ordering. Kudos, that's a pretty inventive mistake there. I'll bear it in mind next time.

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Obviously the themes behind it fit with the episode`s message; it was the action itself (why his name? why would Fry think that? Why is Yancy`s problem stealing?), plus the logistics problems (why did no one ever say "hey, the first Martian had the same name as you"? why couldn`t Fry recognize that it was not his own brother?) that was contrived.

The entire story tells us why Fry would think that Yancy had stolen his name. As for the first man on mars, think about this: how often do you talk about the first man on the moon?

Armstrong and Aldrin landed forty years ago, and they're hardly the topic of everyday conversation at delivery companies right now. Philip J. Fry II landed much longer ago than that compared to the "present" in Futurama. Longer ago than Columbus landed in America compared to today, in fact. Heh. How often in a year do you talk about Columbus? We're expected to make these mental allowances because the fact that nobody has commented on it until it comes up serves the plot. There are plenty of plot elements that are guilty of this in Futurama. For example, in Lobstertainment, howcome we've never heard of Harold Zoid, Zoidberg's famous uncle until that point?

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"Seven-leaf clover" is not a joke. At least not the kind you`re supposed to find humourous.

It's a joke. A four-leaf clover is something that's real and crops up occasionally as a symbol of good luck. Seven is a lucky number, whereas four is not. So it stands to reason (or at least the same kind of reason employed in troll science) that a seven-leaf clover would be even luckier. Of course, they don't actually exist, but that's a part of the joke. It's funny, and you're supposed to find it funny. Assuming you're not a completely humourless dumbass, of course.

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As for your comments about b-boying, it`d be a waste of time to argue with someone who clearly has no idea what they`re talking about; their only source of knowledge on the subject having come from that very scene in the episode.

Initially, I thought you were using some obscure slang to refer to the beatboxing itself. I had no idea you were referring to the breakdancing.

Now that I'm better informed, everything I said goes double.

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So I`ll just leave you with instructions to Youtube Bboy`s Kujo, Cloud, and/or Ken Swift (esp Cloud), which I know you won`t do since you have a very busy schedule of posting FIRST! on the comment section of articles and writing death threats to George Lucas.

I took a look. Whilst I'm sure that his abilities are very impressive to a certain subset of people, the average breakdancer is clearly an insane individual who places way too much focus and importance on rolling around the floor whilst maintaining a fanatical obsession with letting as little of his body as possible contact said floor.

I should also probably point out that I have never posted "FIRST" on anything, but have been known to tell the people who do exactly how obnoxious and irritating I find them.

My busy schedule right now is split fairly equally between university, caring for my terminally ill cat, and trying to make sure my girlfriend understands that it's not okay to murder her family just because she find them somewhat annoying. Commenting on anything on the internet is a distant fourth in terms of priorities.

Oh, and that I've never written a death threat to George Lucas. Obviously, I wish he'd stop dicking around with Star Wars, but I don't wish him death. If I cared enough about killing somebody I would not waste my time with warning them of my intentions anyway.

I'd just kill them. No warning. No incriminating letters. No evidence. No arrest, no prison sentence, no chance of being raped in the showers.

Now I'll let you get back to loving the worst parts of Futurama. I'll be over here, loving the better ones.

If you don't mind Welshy, would you care to voice why you find "That's Lobstertainment!" a better episode? Because I don't think any reasonable person would be capable of figuring it out by themselves.

It's a joke. A four-leaf clover is something that's real and crops up occasionally as a symbol of good luck. Seven is a lucky number, whereas four is not. So it stands to reason (or at least the same kind of reason employed in troll science) that a seven-leaf clover would be even luckier. Of course, they don't actually exist, but that's a part of the joke. It's funny, and you're supposed to find it funny. Assuming you're not a completely humourless dumbass, of course.

56 leaves? The mind boggles. That's just insane. Alright, seven-leaf clovers exist. Or rather, it's possible for a clover to have seven leaves. I don't think they exist as a meaningfully measurable fraction of the global population, but I'll concede that it's not entirely unrealistic for Fry to find one.

It's still pretty funny. Any time I see a seven-leaf clover, I'll think of Futurama and TLOTF. I mean, they could have gone with a four-leaf clover. A seven-leaf clover still seems rather over-the-top (and therefore amusing), especially because most people won't even realise that they're possible. Unless, I suppose, they come to read this conversation.

I stand by the over-the-top jump from having a regular four-leaf clover to a seven-leaf one being funny. It's a good joke. It makes us realise we're watching something uniquely silly.

I have to admit, the episode is rather depressing in some ways (considering that the wacky future we love so much is going to vanish at some point in the future, and there will be no trace of NNY ever.)

Nothing lasts forever, Spacefish.

The moon is slowly drifting away from the Earth. In a few thousand years, it'll be a lot smaller. In a few more thousand years, it'll escape us entirely, and either wander into space or fall into the sun.

The sun itself is going to burn up all of its fuel at some point. Millions of years from now, it will expand and swallow the inner planets. Mars will become a tropical world, briefly. Then it'll collapse again, and basically become a cinder. The solar system will become an assortment of bodies on their own courses to nowhere, and disperse. The sun's remains will drift through the void as well. Some lumps of accumulated metals, some clouds of gases, but nothing larger than an asteroid. It'll all wander around the universe, until it happens across a strong enough gravitational field to pull it in.

This will happen to every single solar system. One by one, the stars in the universe will burn out, and become so much celestial diftwood. These bits and pieces will either end up feeding black holes or end up wandering forever until the particles that make them up begin to decay (more on this in a moment).

Even black holes will evaporate over time. They need to be fed with material. Once it's all gone, they'll still be throwing out all sorts of exotic radiation. That's gotta come from somewhere. It uses up mass. The black hole shrinks. Until it's either not a black hole anymore, or it's gone.

Eventually, the universe will reach a state where all energy has become dissipated and diffuse to the point where no particle has any relation to another, and everything is as close to a temperature of absolute zero as possible whilst matter still actually exists.

Finally, matter will cease to exist. On a long enough timeline (Bajillions and Umptillions of Squillions of years), all elementary particles are subject to decay. We think that protons might be stable indefinitely, but it's doubtful that we'll ever be able to prove it. Even if they are, they'll be unrelated to any other particle, and everything will at some point stop moving, as well. The universe will suffer what's known as "heat death".

Before that happens though, the internal clock of the universe might run out. There has been speculation that time as we know it is not infinite, and there might only be a certain period for which it will run.

Yeah, experimental physicists like to think about weird things. I don't hang around with any of those guys.

The only thing that's certain is that nothing is forever, and change is the driving force behind all of existence. All that we can be sure of is entropy. Which is odd, considering how long it actually took us to define and quantify entropy. You'd think that something that fundamental would have been one of the first things that mankind would search to understand. Instead, we spent a few thousand years dodging the questions that would have led us there.

Apparantly it was important to invent war and pyramids and cheese first.

That's exactly why the episode feels pretty melancholy to me. The episode reminds me of that, of the impermanence of well... everything. One day there will be no trace that any of us ever existed. Fast forward enough million years, and there will be no trace that the human species ever existed. I guess the idea that one day there will be no Atlantic Ocean or barn owls or Dr Pepper or sunflowers or Futurama does make me feel a bit... sad sometimes. It's one thing to admit your own mortality, but to admit the mortality of your species or your planet or your universe is like... wow.

On the other hand, Pangea Ultima (if it happens) does look pretty badass, even if humans won't be around to see it.

It's one of my favorite episodes of the series, but probably the best criticism of The Late Philip J. Fry that I've seen is that Fry really doesn't do very much in the episode. Leela and Fry are separated but there's not much either of them can really do about it, and Fry is just sort of along for the ride with the Professor for the most part. Typically speaking, in a film or television screenplay you do want to give the primary character not just a goal (which the episode does have), but something to actually do to get it. This issue has certainly sunk a few other time-travel stories for me before (such as The Time Traveler's Wife), where I feel the primary characters are too passive and unable to do very much with their ability to time travel. That said, I think the episode still works wonderfully despite this.

The only thing that's certain is that nothing is forever, and change is the driving force behind all of existence. All that we can be sure of is entropy. Which is odd, considering how long it actually took us to define and quantify entropy. You'd think that something that fundamental would have been one of the first things that mankind would search to understand. Instead, we spent a few thousand years dodging the questions that would have led us there.

Apparantly it was important to invent war and pyramids and cheese first.

The only thing that's certain is that nothing is forever, and change is the driving force behind all of existence. All that we can be sure of is entropy. Which is odd, considering how long it actually took us to define and quantify entropy. You'd think that something that fundamental would have been one of the first things that mankind would search to understand. Instead, we spent a few thousand years dodging the questions that would have led us there.

Apparantly it was important to invent war and pyramids and cheese first.

I won't even mention organized religion here ...

And it took them how many millennia to invent Monster Munch? For shame, human race, for shame.

It's one of my favorite episodes of the series, but probably the best criticism of The Late Philip J. Fry that I've seen is that Fry really doesn't do very much in the episode. Leela and Fry are separated but there's not much either of them can really do about it, and Fry is just sort of along for the ride with the Professor for the most part. Typically speaking, in a film or television screenplay you do want to give the primary character not just a goal (which the episode does have), but something to actually do to get it.

I agree that Fry is kind of powerless throughout the episode, and that such unfair persecution of the protagonist by the universe at large doesn't generally make for a compelling story, but I wouldn't really call him passive. His desire to see Leela again is what propels the episode in a very real way (he wants to get back to the present much more eagerly--and for much more powerful reasons--than do Farnsworth or Bender). I guess what I'm saying is that, though Fry lacks the scientific know-how to navigate through time that the Professor has, he is the only character who has a strong emotional reason to continue the search for the backwards time machine--and that is what makes the episode worth watching. If you strip "The Late Philip J. Fry" of the emotional component--the love story--then you are left with something that's amusing (three characters time-traveling and encountering progressively zanier futures) but not particularly resonant.

I don't know if I'm making any sense here, but my point is that, though Fry doesn't contribute much to the story in a physical way (he's not the one pulling that lever and hurling them through time; he's not the one talking to the inhabitants of the various futures and asking about the existence of a backwards time machine), he (and Leela) provide the emotional impetus for all the action--and that through-line is what makes the episode so memorable.

Also, I realize that you're kind of playing devil's advocate here and that, like you say, the episode works brilliantly in spite of these perceived flaws. I just don't think I've ever heard that particular criticism of TLPJF before, so I wanted to try to work out a counter-argument to it for myself. You know, 'cause I'm a dweeb.

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This issue has certainly sunk a few other time-travel stories for me before (such as The Time Traveler's Wife), where I feel the primary characters are too passive and unable to do very much with their ability to time travel.

This is a minor, totally irrelevant point, but The Time Traveler's Wife works really well as a book; I think it's easier to forgive physical passivity in that instance, because as a reader you're privy to the characters' thoughts and whatnot. They're not intellectually or emotionally passive (which is, I guess, kind of what I'm also talking about in the case of Fry). The movie, though, suffers greatly from having characters who do little more than mope about how unfair their lives are for two solid hours. At least Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams are pretty to look at...

I don't know if I'm making any sense here, but my point is that, though Fry doesn't contribute much to the story in a physical way (he's not the one pulling that lever and hurling them through time; he's not the one talking to the inhabitants of the various futures and asking about the existence of a backwards time machine), he (and Leela) provide the emotional impetus for all the action--and that through-line is what makes the episode so memorable.

Yep, you are making sense:) It has also been mentioned somewhere (cannot find it again, am not even sure if it was on Peel), that Fry (though just hanging on for the ride) was the only one delivering a valid, personal reason for returning to the past, and therefore the only one giving the whole episode a meaning.

Though passive (but yet the most determined in TLPJF), it did fit the early Fry's character design as "keeping the entire show together".- He was the audiences connection to 20th century- Fry is used to keep the trio together via the Bender/Best Buddy and Leela/Love intereset link (rather important for a show where the characters "stay among themself" more than in others)etc...so it's quite fitting that his love for Leela is used as a connection to the past, and therefore keeps the group still together.

I think the writers might have poked at that in "Law and Orcale", where a more competent Fry on rather successful solo career was shown, but abandoning the "center of all" role. "We have no idea what you are doing here, but we desperately need you back" imhO really nails it. Fry's main importance is not based on deliberate actions, but "keeping the whole thing together" character constellation wise.

Did I say those were my own personal sentiments? They were merely examples of sentences that could be responded to by a line about not having a grave sense of humour. I explicitly mentioned this in my post.

Well, obviously it won't be. Matt and the Curiosity Company will for sure not let him send something like that. But if it is, I'd probably not show anyone if he said I can't. Still, it's worth looking forward to.

And that list is far from complete, especially regarding pilots and development.

Baby Cow signed a deal to adapt their properties back in 2009 meaning that US remakes of Saxondale, The Mighty Boosh and one of Nighty Night headed up by the woman behind Sex and the City went into development but we've heard nothing from them since and they're presumably dead.

And Peep Show has two US pilots because people tried to adapt it to the US market on two separate occasions.

There's currently a US remake of The Inbetweeners in the works and Greg Daniels is preparing a pilot for a remake of last year's Friday Night Dinner (which quite frankly, given his track record, has potential to be better than the original).

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